"Python" is not a good name, should rename to "Athon"

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sat, 01 Dec 2007 23:55:32 -0800, Russ P. wrote:

> I neither know nor care much about Newton's personality and social
> graces, but I can assure you that he was more than a "technician" (no
> offense to technicians).
> 
> If you just read the Wikipedia preamble about him you will realize that
> he is arguably the greatest scientist who ever lived.

"Arguably" is right.

Please, stop with the fanboy squeeing over Newton. Enough is enough. 
Newton has already received far more than his share of honours.

He might have been a great intellectual but he was no scientist. It's 
only by ignoring the vast bulk of his work -- work which Newton himself 
considered *far* more important and interesting than his work on physics 
and mathematics -- that we can even *pretend* he was a scientist.

Newton was arrogant, deceitful, secretive, and hostile to other peoples 
ideas. Arrogance sometimes goes hand in hand with intellectual 
brilliance, and there's no doubt that Newton was brilliant, but the last 
three are especially toxic for good science. His feuds against two of his 
intellectual equals, Leibniz and Hooke, held mathematics and the sciences 
back significantly. They weren't the only two: he feuded with Astronomer 
Royal John Flamsteed, John Locke, and apparently more tradesmen than 
anyone has counted. He held grudges, and did his best to ruin those who 
crossed him.

Historians of science draw a fairly sharp line in the history of what 
used to be called "natural philosophy" (what we now call science). That 
line is clearly drawn *after* Newton: as John Maynard Smith has said, 
Newton was the last and greatest of the magicians, not the first of the 
scientists. He was first and foremost a theologian and politician, an 
alchemist, a religious heretic obsessed with End Times, and (when he 
wasn't being secretive and isolating himself from others) a shameless 
self-promoter unwilling to share the spotlight.

The myth of Newton the scientist is pernicious. Even those who recognise 
his long periods of unproductive work, his wasted years writing about the 
end of the world, his feuds, his secrecy and his unprofessional grudges 
against other natural philosophers, still describe him as a great 
scientist -- despite the fact that Newton's way of working is anathema to 
science. The myth of science being about the lone genius dies hard, 
especially in popular accounts of science. Science is a collaborative 
venture, like Open Source, and it relies on openness and cooperation, two 
traits almost entirely missing in Newton.

There is no doubt that Newton was a great intellect. His influence on 
mechanics (including astronomy) was grand and productive; that on optics 
was mixed, but his alchemical writings have had no influence on modern 
chemistry. Newton's calculus has been virtually put aside in favour of 
Leibniz's terminology and notation. The great bulk of his work, his 
theological writings, had little influence at the time and no lasting 
influence at all.

Newton was lucky to live at a time of great intellectual activity. Had he 
lived thirty years earlier, his secrecy would almost certainly have meant 
that his discoveries, such as they were, would have died with him. Had he 
lived thirty years later, others like Leibniz, Hooke, the Bernoullis, or 
others, would have made his discoveries ahead of him -- perhaps a few 
years or a decade later, but they would have done so, as Leibniz 
independently came up with calculus.

There's no doubt that Newton was a genius and an important figure in the 
history of science, but to describe him as a scientist is to distort both 
the way Newton worked and the way science works. By all means give him 
credit for what he did and what he was, but don't pretend he was 
something that he was not.


-- 
Steven